The Guardian brings us news of research, confirming what we all already know:

Buckels and colleagues asked about the participants’ internet behavior, including how frequently they comment on blogs and forums. They also gauged how the subjects commented, asking whether they preferred debating, chatting, making friends, or trolling. Of the 418 participants, 59% said that they actively comment on websites. Among those, nearly a tenth admitted that their favorite activity was trolling other users.

Scores on the Dark Tetrad personality test revealed that trolls are, by far, more likely to have narcissistic, Machiavellian, psychopathic, and sadistic personality traits.

The internet is a powerful tool for communication, but it can sometimes be a double-edged sword. As most of us have seen or experienced, the internet can bring out the worst behavior in people, highlighting some of the cruelest and most hurtful aspects of humanity. Issues such as bullying online and trolling have garnered a lot of attention recently, prompting questions about who does, and should, regulate the internet, and what free speech means online.

AligarrTrolling and "bad behavior " are common on the internet .But a much larger problem exists which is far more damaging . Outright LIES , SLANDER ,and unfounded innuendo . Opinion is merged with facts ,and the results are obvious ...

Proposal 6 must be defeated at the polls to stop a billionaire’s attempt to enshrine his monopoly into the Michigan Constitution.
Billed as the democratic-sounding ‘People Should Decide’ proposal, supporters say a yes vote will give you a voice in whether a new Detroit-Windsor bridge is built with public dollars.

We wonder if a ballot measure has ever been so cynically named, because Proposal 6 isn’t about democracy at all. It’s about protecting the monopoly of Matty Moroun, owner of the Ambassador Bridge, at the expense of Michigan’s economic interests.

Yes, advertisements about the supposed costs to Michigan taxpayers of the New International Trade Crossing have been compelling. They have also, according to the non-partisan Michigan Truth Squad, ranged from flagrant misrepresentations to all-out lies.

So let’s put aside the images of teachers and other ordinary folk claiming to be concerned about ‘real people’ and look at three crucial reasons this proposal should be defeated.

The proposed bridge is critical to Michigan’s economic future

The 83-year-old Ambassador Bridge carries 25 percent of all U.S.-Canada trade, but its location is inefficient for commercial vehicles. A new bridge that connects directly with Ontario’s 401 highway would be good for business and is vital to our economic future.

The Troll has been spamming the airwaves with attack ads and postal mail. DO NOT BE TRICKED by his deceptive methods. The only one to benefit by the passing of Proposal 6 is The Troll, everyone else will suffer.

Syrian authorities on Thursday sent text messages over cell phones nationwide with a message for rebels fighting President Bashar Assad’s regime: “Game over.”

The messages signed by the Syrian Arab Army also urged the rebels to surrender their weapons and warned the countdown to evict foreign fighters has begun. The texts appear to be part of the regime’s psychological battle against the rebels, but are highly unlikely to have any effect on fighters intent on toppling Assad.

Syrians say they began receiving the messages a day after rebels bombed a military command center in Damascus — a major security breach of the heavily guarded capital that highlighted the regime’s growing vulnerability in the face of a rebellion growing in confidence and capabilities.

People with cellular subscriptions received the messages while those with prepaid phones did not, residents in the Syrian capital said.

A Wayne County judge this morning sent billionaire Manuel (Matty) Moroun and his chief deputy at the Ambassador Bridge company, Dan Stamper, to jail until they are in compliance with his order to finish building ramps connecting the Ambassador Bridge to nearby expressways.

Lawyers sought stays of his order, but Circuit Judge Prentis Edwards denied the motion and others seeking the immediate release of the two men.

Wayne County sheriff’s deputies led both men out of court through a back door in the courtroom at 10:15 a.m.

Defense lawyers declined comment after the hearing but said they would appeal immediately to the Michigan Court of Appeals.

Michigan Department of Transportation Chief Operating Officer Greg Johnson said it would take at minimum a year to complete ramps, lanes and other unfinished elements of the project if the Bridge Company cooperated fully.

“We take no joy or satisfaction in seeing these men incarcerated,” Johnson said, adding, the state only wants to see the project completed.

Earlier: Lawyers argue Moroun doesn’t control bridge

Earlier in the hearing, Judge Edwards said, “It is clear” that the Detroit International Bridge Co. ‘does not intend to comply with the court order’ to finish work delayed by more than two years.

Dark_Falconre: #9 Genshed Actually no, he's just being an asshole. If either of Ayn Rand's heroes, Howard Rourk and John Galt, had taken a contract they would fulfill it. Ayn Rand did not like government owned bridges, but she would ...

DETROIT, MI — A team of nine lawyers for the Ambassador Bridge company made a last-ditch plea Thursday to Detroit judge Prentis Edwards not to appoint a receiver to complete court-ordered construction work on the bridge’s U.S. plaza.

‘You can’t plug in a party with no background on this and yet somehow has the ability to complete this project,’ said lawyer Phillip Alber.

‘There are innumerable details that are the source of this impasse. I don’t believe removing (the bridge company) and plugging in someone else would lead to completion of the project.’

Edwards deferred his decision until Jan. 12.

Billionaire bridge owner Matty Moroun has failed to complete a redesign of the Detroit plaza in accordance with a ruling by the judge in February 2010.

Edwards ordered the bridge company to remove toll booths, gas pumps and several bridge piers after ruling that the company illegally constructed them on city property and in violation of a state government agreement under the $230-million Gateway Project.

Moroun is facing contempt of court penalties for failing to comply and has been ordered — along with other bridge executives — to appear at the Jan. 12 hearing to face sanctions that could include imprisonment.

The judge listened to arguments Thursday from lawyers for the bridge and the Michigan Department of Transportation regarding whether a receiver should be appointed to complete the court-ordered work.

Alber urged the judge to appoint a mediator who could sit down with both parties ‘all day and every day until every issue is resolved.’

Another bridge lawyer, Craig John, urged Edwards to carefully weigh who best offers the greatest likelihood of ‘getting to the goal-line’ on the project’s completion.

‘There is no reason to appoint a receiver because progress is being made,’ John said. ‘The project is close to completion and the bridge company should be allowed to complete it with due diligence.’

But the state’s Assistant Attorney General Robert Mol, representing MDOT, told Edwards the bridge company and its lawyers have become adept at ‘lots of talking and no action’ when it comes to finishing the project under the court order.

‘(The bridge company) has not built what this court ordered it to build,’ Mol said. ‘The conflict here is that (the bridge company) refuses to accept that and they keep arguing for a whole new design.’

Thanks to the legal impasse and lack of completion by Moroun under the court order, trucks entering the U.S. have been forced to reach I-75 and I-96 in Detroit by using local streets.

And nearly two years after the ruling, car drivers are forced to weave through a maze of local streets, service drives and lanes through Moroun’s massive new duty free complex in order to get on the bridge.

In the last year, newspaper copyright troll Righthaven has brought its dubious lawsuits in two states: Nevada and Colorado. (Update: a lawyer in South Carolina says Righthaven filed a single case there as well.) With a new ruling today from a Colorado federal judge overseeing all of Righthaven’s cases there, courts in both states have now told Righthaven to take a hike—and to pay court costs before it goes.

Righthaven’s business model has been based largely on suing small-time bloggers and forum posters who have copied articles or photos from the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Denver Post. When threatened with a federal lawsuit for copyright infringement, many of these users decided to settle for a few thousand dollars instead. It turns out they needn’t have done so, however; Righthaven never had the right to sue them in the first place.

That’s because the operating agreement between Righthaven and the newspapers only gave Righthaven a bare right to sue. But a Nevada judge overseeing numerous Righthaven cases looked at the agreement and ruled that there was no such right in copyright law and that only a true copyright holder could litigate in defense of its own works.

Today, Judge John Kane in Colorado came to the same conclusion in one of the numerous Righthaven cases he oversees there. In his view, the assignment of a bare right to sue runs counter to the constitutional goal of furthering progress in the arts and sciences—the stated justification for copyright.

I had no idea this guy was such a complete jackass. Apparently, he’s not as smart as he thinks he is. Ugh, what a creep.

When commenters on MetaFilter started ragging on a recent Wall Street Journal story by Scott Adams, the Dilbert creator and sexist jackass who last month opined that “women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently,” one user, “plannedchaos,” leapt to his defense. “He has a certified genius I.Q., and that’s hard to hide,” noted plannedchaos, who went on to ask, “Is it Adams’ enormous success at self-promotion that makes you jealous and angry?”

Mr. Chaos has apparently long been a fan of Adams; Gawker noted Monday that early this year, he was posting on Reddit that “It’s fair to say you disagree with Adams. But you can’t rule out the hypothesis that you’re too dumb to understand what he’s saying. And he’s a certified genius.” How fortunate for Adams there are people in the world not “too dumb” to understand the certified genius. It just happens that they’re all Scott Adams. On Friday, the cartoonist admitted on MetaFilter that he and plannedchaos are one and the same. My tie! It’s curving upward in astonishment!

[…]

Adams further countered on Monday with a fabulously self-congratulatory blog post account of his actions, explaining, “Conflict of interest is like a prison that locks in both the truth and the lies. One workaround for that problem is to change the messenger. That’s where an alias comes in handy. When you remove the appearance of conflict of interest, it allows others to listen to the evidence without judging.” Oh, it was about the evidence! The evidence that, as plannedchaos wrote, “Everyone on this page is talking about him, researching him, and obsessing about him” — especially plannedchaos. Adams also draws parallels between his situation and that of Orange County Republican Party central committee member Marilyn Davenport, who has been attacked for forwarding an email with Obama’s head Photoshopped onto a chimp. (Both she and Adams, he argues, were victim of the Internet’s lack of “context.”)

Surabaya StewUsed to be a daily reader (and occasional commentator) on his blog; Adams can be fantasticly funny and/or insightful where he's not being a dickbag. Sadly, he's been sliding in the past year or so...but I had no idea it ...

This is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. To use it, drag this button to your browser's bookmark bar, and title it 'LGF Pages' (or whatever you like). Then browse to a site you want to post, select some text on the page to use for a quote, click the bookmarklet, and the Pages posting window will appear with the title, text, and any embedded video or audio files already filled in, ready to go.

Or... you can just click this button to open the Pages posting window right away.

From Sen. Schumer's Facebook page: There are two simple reasons the comparison does not hold water. First, the federal RFRA was written narrowly to protect individuals' religious freedom from government interference unless the government or state had a compelling interest. ...

We are at a critical moment in Indiana's history. And much is at stake. Our image. Our reputation as a state that embraces people of diverse backgrounds and makes them feel welcome. And our efforts over many years to ...

UPDATE MARCH 30: NEW TIME FOR LIVE STREAM - 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. PDT NASA's Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) project will be flying a rocket-powered, saucer-shaped test vehicle into near-space from the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on ...

What's this? Another article on Cracked about how incorrigibly tribal-minded us homo sapiens are? Well, yes. But the proverbial devil is in the proverbial details. Proverbially. It's still worth reading. That's what I'm getting at. Everyone is talking about Scientology ...

China attacks the biggest code repository in the world. After battling a distributed denial of service attack for four days, GitHub on Monday was able to restore normal service levels. The primary target of the assault is greatfire.org, which is ...

An American woman--presumably not Muslim, though she doesn't say one way or the other--married to a Libyan man is taken aback when her 9-year-old daughter suddenly wants to start wearing hijab. This is the story of how conflicted she felt ...

NEW YORK, March 27 (Reuters) - Big Wall Street banks are so upset with U.S. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren's call for them to be broken up that some have discussed withholding campaign donations to Senate Democrats in symbolic protest, ...

By Lawrence Hurley WASHINGTON, March 30 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a new challenge to President Barack Obama's healthcare law that took aim at a bureaucratic board labeled by some Republicans as a ...

Depending on the outcome of a hearing scheduled for Monday, a 33-year-old Indiana woman could face up to 70 years in prison for what she says was a miscarriage. Reproductive rights advocates say her case is a disturbing example ...

On Friday, Motherboard reve​aled that fully functioning Uber accounts were for sale on the dark web. Today, it appears that some people have fallen victim to fraudulent trips being made with their login credentials. "It happened this morning," Phil ...

Are conservatives anti-science? Spoiler: Conservatives aren't anti-science or pro-science. But, they are pro-common-sense. And once more scientists adopt common sense approach to science, they'll find that they have the support of conservative politicians - the people whose job it is ...

cracked.com Once the fighting started, a lot of people died, well over a million on our side alone. For the war to continue, a constant stream of new fighters had to join up, and they didn't have the benefit of ...

Here is an interesting article on one of Tail Gunner Joe's sick witch hunts that has, unfortunately, been forgotten. I try not to feel schadenfreude of the fate of McCarthy's side kick, Ray Cohn, but I never succeed.

About the Graphic How should a woman try to get ahead in a male-dominated workplace? Perhaps the answer lies less on women "manning up" and more in how businesses value their employees. Many women confront this tension as they ...

If we accept the idea of Orthopraxy over Orthodoxy, then what does evangelism look like? What is the Witness of those who try to follow the Way of Christ Jesus? To evangelize is to spread the good news that we ...

A short column in The Nation that is a must read. The primary difference between liberalism and conservatism, at least in theory, is that the latter is an ideology and the former isn't. Conservatism, as Milton Friedman argued, posits that ...

Blow off Snowden all you like, but what was revealed to be true is still true. The NSA lacks oversight with power. FISA is already too much and now they casually exceed even that generous provision. The world first learned ...

This is a powerful admission of culpability and I applaud his courage in making it. It really should be read in its entirety. Glenn Ford should be completely compensated to every extent possible because of the flaws of a system ...

Sarah Vine of the DM gets it wrong: SARAH VINE: Teaching 11-year-olds about rape is a form of child abuse The problem with this country, I've come to realise, is that it treats adults like children and children like adults. ...